Pinched
How the Great Recession Has Narrowed Our Futures and What We Can Do About It
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
The Great Recession is not done with us yet. While the most acute part of the economic crisis is past, the recession's most significant impact on American life still lies in the future. The personal, social, and cultural changes that result from severe economic shocks build and manifest themselves only slowly. But history shows us that, ultimately, shocks this severe profoundly alter the character of society.
Don Peck’s Pinched, a fascinating and harrowing exploration of our dramatic economic climate, keenly observes how the recession has changed the places we live, the work we do, and even who we are—and details the transformations that are yet to come. Every class and every generation will be affected: newly minted college graduates, blue-collar men, affluent professionals, exurban families, elite financiers, inner city youth, middle-class retirees.
This was not an ordinary recession, and ordinary responses will not fully end it. The crash has shifted the course of the economy. In its aftermath, the middle class is shrinking faster, wealth is becoming more concentrated, twenty-somethings are sinking, and working-class families and communities are changing in unsavory ways.
We sit today between two eras, buffeted, anxious, and uncertain of the future. Through vivid reporting and lucid argument, Peck helps us make sense of how our society has changed, and why so many people are still struggling.
The answers to these questions reveal a new way forward for America. The country has endured periods like this one before, and has emerged all the stronger from them; adaptation and reinvention have been perhaps the nation’s best and most enduring traits. The time is ripe for another such reinvention. Pinched lays out the principles and public actions that can help us pull it off.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The Great Recession may have receded, but its consequences will resound through our society for years to come, as shown in this fascinating exploration from Peck, managing editor of the Atlantic. Though life in major cities and affluent suburbs has returned to something like normal, jobs remain scarce and the housing market devastated. The downturn will have an irrevocable, transformative impact on American life and culture and Peck extrapolates those consequences and possible responses by looking at comparable economic calamities of the past: the panic of the 1890s, the Great Depression, and the oil-shock recessions of the 1970s. The current recession has affected the rich and poor unevenly, and this economic rift is mirrored geographically, as some areas recuperate from the crash and some founder. On the societal end, women are fast becoming the essential breadwinners and authority figures in many working-class families and the previously over-confident Millennial Generation is showing the career conservatism of the generations before them. In the meantime, race relations have become yet more strained and complicated, xenophobia festers, and rural conservatism grows. Peck wraps up his exegesis with a consideration on the future of politics and possible strategies for healing the aftereffects of the recession. An important, far-thinking consideration of the reverberations social, political, psychological of the financial crash.
Customer Reviews
Pinched
Penetrating and insightful as well as a bit chilling. The millennials future squandered by their grandparents and their parents don't have the intellect or courage to solve the paradigm. sad and scary.
Frightfully enlightening !
This book takes you through the frank black&white realities of the current economic situation as well as the more (alarming) subtleties of its impact on the current and future generations of US citizens, of all socioeconomic levels and situations. In addition, it adds full illumination on the scope of the economic concern by drawing parallels (as well as dispelling parallels) to past downturns and depressions. It is this perspective that adds the depth and full color "alarm" to our economic reality and prospects.
I found the book to be educational, enlightening, scary as all hell, and yet entertaining and a great read. I very highly recommend this and would suggest it as a "must read" for everyone other than those who wish to stay comfortably in a state of denial !